Veteran civil rights reporter Jim Purks spoke at Concordia on Monday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Purks presented "Martin Luther King and Civil Rights: An Eyewitness Report" and took questions from the audience.
As a young reporter for the Associated Press, Purks extensively covered civil rights stories. In his talk, Purks recalled his days as a reporter on the "race beat," including interviews with Martin Luther King Jr., writing about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, and close calls with segregationists and Ku Klux Klan members.
Purks spoke of the progress made on civil rights and race relations since his time as a reporter and also maintained that much work was still needed. He recalled King's lament about missed opportunities for people to do what is right and encouraged the audience to act. "As never before, this nation and world needs good people, good servant leaders who are not silent," said Purks.
A photo of Purks interviewing King, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth is featured on the cover of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Purks went on to work as a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, as press secretary for Florida Secretary of State Richard Stone, as an assistant press secretary for President Jimmy Carter, and as a senior writer for Habitat for Humanity International. Purks is now retired and lives in Americus, Ga., where he is a lay vocational minister in the Episcopal Church.
Speaker series
Two additional speakers have been scheduled in the series for the spring semester. Eliot Brenner, director of public affairs for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will cover "Nuclear Power: A View from Inside the Beltway" on Monday, Feb. 23, at Concordia's Lincoln campus, and he will present "A Washington View of Nuclear Power" on Tuesday, Feb. 24, on Concordia's Seward campus. Dr. Edward Martin, professor of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va., will present the 2009 Martin and Regina Maehr Lecture: "The Problem of Evil" on Friday, March 27, at Concordia's Seward campus.